End of the Road


Sitting on the bike seat at a standstill at the top of the surrounding ridge, the old quarry pit at the end of Cty. FA, past the weather station tower, the HPT trail head, and the Animal Therapy horse stable and field, looks mammoth – the entirety of a bluff top seemingly gouged away and now re-sprouted

green.  For the biker, the new trail openings now offer a route that can take you not only in and around the shorn rim, but across from Cty. FA to Cty. B with many offshoots in between.  I rode around the quarry for the first time.  Climbing up the far northeast end, I rose up onto a long grass field which rolled back down deeper into un-quarried woods.  It was obvious that this portion of the slender trail was not often used – only a faint worn path zig zagged along the soft ridge line until the long grass gave way to one of the more beautiful forest scenes that I've seen in the region since the Aspen stands at Wildcat State Park in Ontario, or the pines at the Experimental Forest up on Cty. II (although both of these forests planned and planted).  A lone birch turned to two, then a clump, until finally the trail was surrounded by the glowing white trunks of hundreds of birches.  At the far end

the trail ducked into an un-bikable thicket, I turned around, and made my way back, took a brief route

around the prairie, under the quiet ceiling of sagging pines, and back onto to the trailhead parking lot.  There are few more satisfying drives in La Crosse that I can think of than back down Bliss Road after a good mountain bike ride up at the top of the bluff – the combination of biking and exercise within the labyrinth of woods is as exhilarating as it is exhausting.